Ether 2:12 this is a choice land…if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ

Thomas S. Monson

“Are we today serving the God of the land, even the Lord Jesus Christ? Do our lives conform with His teachings? Are we entitled to His divine blessings?

“Headlines from America’s leading newspapers, depicting recent events, pass silently in review, that you and I may judge: ‘Serious Crime Registers 10% Increase in Past Year,’ ‘Violence Rocks South,’ ‘Racial Strife Hits East.’ Murder, rape, arson, burglary, assault, narcotics violations are all on the increase in the America of today. These are the headlines of today’s newspapers.

“The revered Abraham Lincoln accurately described our plight: ‘We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown; but we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.’ (Proclamation for a National Fast Day, March 30, 1863.)

“Can we extricate ourselves from this frightful condition? Is there a way out? If so, what is the way? We can solve this perplexing dilemma by adopting the counsel given by Jesus to the inquiring lawyer who asked: ‘Master, which is the great commandment in the law?’ Jesus said unto him, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ (Matthew 22:36-39.)” (Be Your Best Self, p. 96-97)